This publication presents data from the Survey of Income and Housing (SIH) on Australian housing occupancy and costs, and relates these to characteristics of occupants and dwellings such as tenure, family composition of household, dwelling structure, age, income and main source of income. It also includes value of dwelling estimates, and information on recent home buyers.

CHANGES IN THIS ISSUE

Key changes which impact this issue include:

a decrease in fully responding sample size from 18,071 households in 2009-10 to 14,569 households in 2011-12. The expansion of the 2009-10 sample for an extra 4,200 households outside capital cities to support housing indicator reporting was maintained. The additional sample of metropolitan households whose main source of income was a government pension, benefit and/or allowance included in the 2009-10 SIH and HES samples to improve analysis for the Pensioner and Beneficiary Living Cost Index was not maintained.

an additional benchmark for the value of government benefit cash transfers used in 2009-10 was not required in 2011-12.

disability questions for persons aged 15 years and over were not asked in 2011-12, but will be collected in 2013-14.

tables on the housing characteristics of first home buyers with a mortgage, which were included as part of a feature article in 2009-10, are now included in the main publication.

REVISIONS

Errors in processing the 2009-10 income data have been corrected, resulting in an average decrease of $1 for mean equivalised disposable household income across all households. This was reflected largely in a decrease of 0.04% in the mean equivalised disposable household income of households in the second and third deciles. The income estimates for 2009-10 shown in this publication have been revised. The second edition of the 2009-10 CURF includes the revised estimates.

EFFECTS OF ROUNDING

Where figures have been rounded, discrepancies may occur between sums of the component items and totals. Published percentages are calculated prior to rounding of the figures and therefore some discrepancy may exist between these percentages and those that could be calculated from the rounded figures.

INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070 or Living Conditions on Canberra (02) 6252 6174, email <living.conditions@abs.gov.au>.

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